I’m dumping out my “nausea bag” for the world. Here are six more of my remedies for anxiety-related nausea.

We collapsed the camping tent and, immediately, my symbolic safe space had been rolled up into a bag. Enter the nausea.

Tell us how you overcame anxiety this week, even if only for one fleeting moment.

I wanted to re-frame a breakdown into a breakthrough.

For anyone with an anxiety disorder, surgery can be a special kind of hell. Consider anesthesia: a numbing of our consciousness that’s beyond our own control.

“I had told a friend of mine [at school] that I felt like dying, and had a plan to kill myself. She told one of the teachers, and they said the school couldn’t handle me anymore.”

(This is the sixteenth post in a series called “Anxiety Society”, in which I interview everyday anxiety sufferers from all walks of life about their struggles, their triumphs, their coping methods, and more. I believe that the more we openly talk about our mental health, the less of a “thing” it becomes. Conversation can reduce stigma, and my interviewees want to be a part of that.)

Meet Sveta.

She loves music, listening to bird calls, and reading. Although she’s just in her early twenties, she’s already been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and dysthymia. Her diagnoses follow a difficult and abusive childhood.

What makes Sveta’s story a bit different from most stories of PTSD and abuse is this: she’s also blind.

Although she can perceive colors and shapes, and distinguish between light and dark, that’s the extent of her visual ability. The blindness affects everything from her ability to escape triggering situations to her anxiety coping strategies. Her parents still largely control the minutae of her everyday life, so Sveta finds herself struggling to carve out her own strategies for controlling her environment.

Summer: Have you always been blind, or were you able to see at some point in your life?

Sveta: I was born 3 months and 2 weeks early. I was put on oxygen because I couldn’t breathe. The result was that not only could I breathe, but the blood vessels in my eyes grew too fast, forcing the retina and the eye apart.

SB: And you suffer from an anxiety disorder, correct? Do you mind sharing your diagnoses?

S: I have been diagnosed with dysthymia, also known as chronic depression and complex PTSD, which is like BPD but to a lesser degree.

SB: Do you feel the dysthymia was always present, or did it develop at some point in your life?

S: The dysthymia was always there for as long as I can remember. My parents used to make fun of my love for minor keys saying, “You only like songs where someone dies”. This, of course, isn’t true. I like the minor key, not the death. It happens, sometimes, that songs where someone dies are in minor keys. It also happens that in songs in minor keys, sometimes, someone dies.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll share my story with an audience of strangers. I will be re-framing the process of breaking down as one of breaking through.

I can’t panic now, I thought. I want to pay this parking ticket. I have a hair cut appointment in a half hour. Then, I need to grade some more papers. I’ve got shit to do. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.

(Note: this post is part of a series about navigating my way through the 10 Rules for Coping with Panic, which is a nifty little list I keep in my wallet. To read the introduction to this series, check out this post: Coping with Panic: Why I Can’t, and Why I Can.)

THE NINTH RULE

Plan what to do next. When you begin to feel better, look around you and start to plan what to do next.

This time, I’m not going to describe why this step might be difficult or easy. I think those things are obvious.

But here’s what I will say: scale.

Yup. Scale. Think about this rule in varying scales.

You panic on a Monday afternoon. You get through Rules #1-8. You approach Rule #9 and you plan what to do next: you calculate your moves. You determine how and when to stand up. You decide that soon, you’ll get back into your car.

You decide — but don’t yet act — to walk back into the mall or grocery store. Using the brain that so misled you earlier on Monday during the midst of the attack, you plan to return to the scene of the panic attack.

That works, right? It does. It works on a small scale. It works when we view panic as an acute instance that rises and resolves itself within the hour.

ZOOMING OUT

But let’s say you’re making some major progress in your recovery from panic disorder. Your life was hell a few months ago, but now, you’re managing through many aspects of daily life with greater ease. Rule #9, then, tells us that it’s time to reflect. You’ve begun to feel better, yes, but in a larger way this time.

Plan what to do next — not in the next hour, but in the next month. In the next year. Are you where you want to …